Transmissions
by Lady Chalcedony
Summary: In the battle against Blue Skull, Mavis doesn't use Law. Instead, ten years later, Zeref is presented with a Lacrima communication device and a boatload of very enthusiastic old acquaintances. It's rather unfortunate that his people skills have never been that polished to begin with.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** In the battle against Blue Skull, Mavis doesn't use Law. Instead, ten years later, Zeref is presented with a Lacrima communication device and a boatload of very enthusiastic old acquaintances. It's rather unfortunate that his people skills have never been that polished to begin with.

 **Warnings:** Canon divergence. Slight Zeref/Mavis, hare-brained shenanigans abound, founders-centric

 **Disclaimer:** The Wonderful and Enchanting Fairy-Tail universe is the rightful property of Hiro Mashima, extraordinary artist and story teller.

 **Author's Notes:** A muse from my currently exploding folder of Fairy Tail notes, because I really wanted to see Founders hijinks and Zeref's reactions at actual human interaction. Read and enjoy.

* * *

01: IN EXCHANGE

* * *

 _Prompt #15: twist_

The tip of her nails caught and tore painfully as Mavis scrambled up the back of the giant skeletal dragon. All around her, dust and bits of flyaway debris obscured visibility of the town below, leaving only the dragon's arching, steel-plated neck and rearing skull in her line of vision. Mavis' feet throbbed. There were newly blooming bruises in plum grays and sickly yellows along the line of her elbows, and each new impact from the beast colliding and tearing through the adjacent neighbourhoods shot up her elbows and rattled through her teeth.

Past the distant rumbling of the wind, she could hear Zeira's voice, high and frantic, rising in a crescendo as it ripped her name. Mavis heaved herself up to the dragon's wildly trashing head with tremulous arms, nearing falling off as it flung its neck into a half-demolished boutique. The wind had quieted now, even if the sound of the rubble shattering to the ground in chunks hadn't. Grimly, Mavis clawed her way onto one of the dragon's horns and stood upright.

She could do this. She had to do this. Even if it were just a glimmer of a percentage, if Mavis had any hope at all than she would give her everything to save Yuriy. It was a debt, in a way: the one who had whisked Mavis and Zeira off Tenrou Island after seven years of isolation had been Yuriy. He had allowed her and Zeira to see the outside world, to explore the cities and towns and ports of the mainland. That was a weighted debt Mavis didn't know how to repay, something of a phenomenal value she was sure Yuriy himself hadn't realized the meaning behind.

But more importantly, Yuriy was her _friend,_ and Mavis would never forgive herself if she abandoned him like this.

Cool metal rocked beneath the balls of her feet. A great, ear-splitting roar shot from the dragon's open mouth, and she could feel the very air around her tremble from the force of the screech. Mavis squeezed her eyes shut, seeing the yellow-red spots burst at the back of her eyelids. She took a great, deep breath, let her heart calm despite the jolts of adrenaline fueling her movement, and in one smooth motion loosened her arms from around the rigid case of the dragon's horn and threw herself off.

One second. Mavis could feel the dull throb of her heart in her ears.

One and a half seconds. A twist mid-air, and she saw the dragon's gaping maw open wide in front of her: a sharp beak, rusted, mangled strips of metal hanging at the back of its mouth, Yuriy, lying supine at the center of its ribcage.

Two seconds. Her mind span, quicksilver threads calculating for the temperature disturbances, the Ethernano distribution in the air. The ancient chant for the spell swelled in a burst of old magic, heady and enormous on her tongue.

 _"_ _Gather! Oh River of Light guided by the Righteous!_

 _Shine! In order to perish the fangs of evil!"_

A heartbeat of a moment: that was all the needed to gather the necessary amounts of magic. Ethernano swirled, coalescing, shaping itself into a new, crackling energy construct as Mavis held her arms out, palm flat in front of the dragon. Law was the most powerful spell in her arsenal, yes, but it was also incomplete. Faulty and dangerous. Mavis couldn't afford even the slimmest miscalculation with Yuriy's life on the line.

Her voice rose to a scream, and with it, the sky went neon in a burst of golden light.

 _"_ _I command you!"_

The spell the Black Mage called _Glitter_ had all the explosive momentum to break the dragon into a hundred pieces and half the casting risk involved. Yuriy himself would be protected by the numerous layers of metal and the Tenrou jade's long accumulated masses of magic, safe, as Mavis cracked both the jewel and its hulking container. It took just a blink, a flash. A blinding ring girdled the dragon and seared stars into the back of Mavis' eyes.

Five and a half seconds: The magic burst, stilled, and _ruptured_ with the roar of a detonation.

The sky shook. The air shook. Falling down and down on collision course with the rubble below, Mavis felt the searing enormity it wash over her in a tsunami of heat and light energy, in crackling streaks of lightning that wormed through the pores of her skin. The stray sparks bulleted outwards—uncalculated disturbance from the wreckage in the air—and Mavis was caught in the fringe of it, vulnerable and helpless as the remnants of the spell swallowed her whole.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Yuriy: toppling but no worse for wear from their previous battle. And then the backlash hit her full in a spasm of pure power, nothing more to describe it than that, and Mavis was out before her body crashed to the ground.

* * *

She woke up to a honey-yellow ceiling; the wood of it swirled and dented with neat patterns. The room smelt vaguely of cedar chips and freshly laundered blankets, spicy and sharp at once. Mavis blinked slowly. She twitched her hand around the blankets and shuddered at the jolt of needles that raced up her arm, static-like and uncomfortable.

There was a sudden clamouring of movement to her side. Arms pressing down to the mattress and what sounded like a chair being sent skidding to a wall. Precht's face peered hesitantly down at her in place of the ceiling, and he looked—bad. There were heavy bags under his eyes and his skin was pale, clammy-looking. He was wearing something other than armour for once, in a thin shirt and cargo pants, with his hair drooping around his face in a short tangle. Generally, he seemed as if he hadn't slept for days.

"Oh thank the Gods," he breathed, and it was as if a concrete load had suddenly been knocked off his shoulders. "Here, have some water." His arm disappeared from view and returned with a chipped, ruddy orange mug. Mavis slowly eased herself up to the headboard, and Precht, after a moment of consideration, placed the mug back and helped her rise to a sitting position.

Perched on the chair near the bedside table, Zeira clucked her tongue and added, in a tone that was reserved for Mavis' truly stupendous antics: "At least it wasn't Law," she didn't sound any less disapproving though, "Now drink your water."

Smiling softly at her, because that was just the way Zeira showed her concern, Mavis accepted the mug from Precht, than halted, fingers curled around the smooth handle. A brow furrowed down sharply as the events sorted back into a coherent sequence. Questions lined up in rapid succession at the back of her throat. _What happened_ and _Where is this_ and _Yuriy—what happened to Yuriy?_ Then her voice came out. Or rather, a screeching rasp did, the grating sound of a dull blade chipping the side of a boulder.

Mavis closed her mouth.

Precht forced her to drink half the water. And, once he deemed that Mavis was physically fine, if a little sore, sprinted out the room before she could wedge any of her questions into the conversation and returned with a tray of steaming porridge, drizzled in honey and fruit shavings along with a mug of sweet tea.

Mavis stared down at it. "Umm…"

Before she could protest, there was another shuffle of footsteps across the hardwood, and the door slammed open.

"Mavis!" Came Warrod's exuberant bellow. He looked marginally better than Precht, but only marginally, and that might have just been attributed to his natural cheer. He crossed the room to her bed in three great steps and seemed ready to pull her up in a great bear hug before he registered the porridge and the tea, and settled for patting her on the head instead. "You good? Feeling better? The doctor said it was extreme case of over-exertion and magical exhaustion along with some scrapes and bruises. You've been out for five days, though, so eat up, you must be hungry—"

Mavis took this as the opportunity to shoot out her questions in a rapid-fire mangle of words. "Where's Yuriy? Is he okay? What happened to the dragon-"

"Mavis?"

Yuriy was only clad in a pair of hazardously pulled up pants and a towel when he scrambled through the door, dripping water everywhere, nearly careening into Mavis' bedpost from the momentum. His eyes were wide and worried, the lines of his shoulders tense. Mavis felt her own breath come out in puff of relief as he pitched forwards. Yuriy was alright and that was all that mattered. Yuriy was alright, and Mavis had managed to cast _Glitter_ in time.

She beamed at him.

Then there were arms around her shoulders, hair brushing her ear, and she realized that Yuriy was shaking. His hair was damp and he smelled of the milk soap they had in hotels, carefully hugging her from the side so that he didn't disturb the tray in her lap.

When he drew back, his expression was suddenly very shy: mouth creased, hands uneasy at his sides. "I," he started, and then stopped. His teeth bit into the bottom edge of his lip in a gesture Mavis recognized. It was Yuriy: uncomfortable and guilty and more than just a little afraid.

"It's okay," said Mavis.

"I told him to take a shower," Warrod added, gesturing at Yuriy. "He didn't leave your bed for two days after he woke up."

Yuriy scowled at him. "As if you did."

"He," Precht dictated severely, "was not unconscious in bed for three days. You needed that shower."

The doctor swept in two minutes later, beckoned by Warrod's very loud exclamation that Mavis was finally awake. He was short man in glasses and a crisp white coat, a dark clipboard tucked beneath one arm and stern eyes. Two steps in the door, he sent Yuriy a thoroughly disapproving look that only those of the medical profession could manage, checked Mavis over, and ordered her not to engage in any activities apart from eating and sleeping for the next week.

Zeira rolled her eyes at Mavis' pout, arms akimbo. "Don't complain," she said. She rapped her knuckles against Mavis' forehead. "You got off easy enough."

* * *

The day of the guild building's completion, Mavis threw up her arms and beamed wide for the photo. She thought of Zeira, and warmth, home and family and friendship. She thought of tomorrow's adventures and yesterday's trials, shimmering in their golden-wrought memories. She thought of all the different people that had brought her here: the black mage and his quiet smiles, Precht's taciturn efficiency, Warrod's boisterous work ethic, Yuriy, the one who had shown her the world beyond her little island.

Above her, the sky swirled blue, crystal clear with just a smudge of white at its corners.

The shutter clicked.

Friends at her back, fairies in her heart, a family for a guild on its first, doe-like steps, and this was a beginning.

* * *

Mavis grew. She shot up ten centimeters in the next five years before she stopped growing—not a lot, but from the faint dregs of memories she had of her parents, neither of them had been very tall. Her wardrobe consisted of long dresses and flowing skirts in pale pastels and cute patterns, with the occasional charm bracelet and flower crown for accessory, and not much else. She wore no shoes (although Yuriy fretted and snuck her boots anyway from the local boutiques anyway.) By the time Mavis hit sixteen, the other three Fairy Tail founders banded together secretly once a week to discuss her romantic prospects, mainly because all it took Mavis to charm the local town boys was a smile and a twirl of her hair.

Precht suggest leniency, "Mavis can make her own decisions." But on days off he stared down her love-struck suitors with a sword and his most imposing glare whenever they snooped around the guild bearing chocolates and flowers. Yuriy didn't even _pretend_ to bother with subtlety. He did background checks and carried wine bottles which he very threateningly brandished whenever anyone bearing intentions of courtship walked in a five meters radius of the resident princess. Mavis herself feigned ignorance and thought it was all very cute of them. Warrod laughed and kept the other two in check whenever Yuriy and Precht's decided actions crashed straight past overprotective and into the boundaries of outrageous.

* * *

The Trade Wars began.

They also ended.

By the end of it, Fiore had new laws, a Magic Council, and a hoard of new and improved inventions only necessity could bring.

* * *

Clear crystal, perfectly round, sat cushioned on a bed of deep velvet cloth at the corner of the Guild's second floor. Mavis smoothed her fingers across the surface of it, feeling for the tiny ridges and bubbles of imperfections along the globe. At the center, a tiny, delicate turquoise crystal glowed softly, trailing lithe fingers across the walls, spider webbing tendrils of magic like a constant lightning storm. Mavis felt her way to the base of the sphere where a square platform sat, short and squat. Slim slots at the sides guaranteed a recharging zone for customized Lacrima crystals.

Carefully, she guided one of the cylindrical prisms out of the recharge zones. It was a chunky thing, as long as the span of her palm, thick as a femur bone. The stone was cool to the touch despite the rebounds of that same turquoise Ethernano coiled at its center.

Mavis slid a pinky nail down one of the thin ridges carved into its side; the one marked with a piece of blue tape and labelled _Yuriy._ The energy in the crystal snapped awake, washing her hands in a dull blue-green glow. From inside: there was a crackle. Background noise like rushing water or the world heard from the curve of a conch shell. Then a familiar voice sounded, low and ecstatic through the distance.

"Hello?" Yuriy sang, and Mavis muffled a laugh in the sleeve of her sweater.

"I'm going for a walk," she told him. "If there's any complications with Rita call me alright?"

There was something like a snort on the other side. Ceramic clinked against wood. "I think if we coddle Rita anymore she might pounce and rip all of us into shreds." He said, voice tinged with laughter. "She nearly ripped me to shreds anyway. Woman can make words sting more than one of Precht's adamantine swords."

"That's why you married her," Mavis reminded him, and grinned wide.

 _"_ _And_ we've got a little bugger on the way. Don't worry 'bout it Princess, you're the godmother. You'll be there when he comes out." With that, the line crackled once, and went dead. Mavis slipped the Lacrima crystal in the pocket of her dress.

These days, Yuriy was the flutter of the summer breeze, perpetually happy but also erratic at times, high on the upcoming responsibilities of fatherhood. It was good for him. Yuriy had spent the better part of three years attempting to woo Rita after their first meeting at the tailor boutique where Rita worked, only to be met with a razor tongue and a ruthlessly practical deposition. It wasn't until the height of the war, when Yuriy had saved her life from an ambush and Rita, stubborn but honorable, returned the favour, did they finally fall into a mutual companionship.

(And as it was spoken at their wedding, the whole "falling in love" part didn't come until Mavis and Precht took pity on him and orchestrated a list of perfect coincidences and romantic outings. Rita was formidable and vaguely terrifying, and also horribly hard to impress.)

One light jump, and Mavis hopped past the wooden bannister and landed on the guild's first floor. The weather outside was customary Fiore summertime: birds tossed up in the clear void of a sky, insects buzzing quietly in the dry air. Mavis took the long, scenic route around town. Her feet lead her past the shopping districts, skirting the lovely redwood complexes by the river side, around the bend of its center government hall. The outer edges of southern Magnolia were rife with construction, as some of the architecture there had been battered down in the Trade War and were yet to be fixed. Mavis ducked beneath a pair of workers heaving up lumber, entering the great forests beyond.

The trails split and parted and converged again into dozen of sometimes befuddling routes. Mavis was partway down one of her favourites, one that lead to a distant waterfall surrounded by tall elm trees, when suddenly the forest broke and opened up into dead leaves, dry earth. Barren and desolate. A rabbit caress lay limp against the ground.

This was…

This was familiar.

Finding the Black Mage took phenomenally less effort than expected, and Mavis couldn't help but wonder if he was making himself obvious, or if she just had the benefit of knowing him semi-personally. Either way, all she had to do was poke around the rest of the woodlands, seeking the dead, wilted patches of forest and using that as a springboard to determine his location.

She waved when she found him. The black and white of his robes was a stark contrast to the lush, flowering oil greens and tender pinks of his surroundings. He was picking his way through a particularly thorny patch of bushes, in a place where the trail did not reach, stopping every once in a while to untangle stray branches jutting into his clothes.

Mavis cupped one hand around her mouth and continued waving the other fitfully in the air. "Mister Black Mage!" She called, mouth curved up in a wide grin.

The man froze, fingers an inch away from the vicious thistle bud stuck in his hair. He turned slowly, and Mavis startled at the sight of him. Pale ash skin, charcoal eyes, the exact same clothes from a decade ago, seemingly no worse for wear. He looked no different from the picture in her memory, if a little sharper at the edges, and Mavis was suddenly struck with how _young_ he looked. The lack of human interaction and her age had made him seem older than he was the first time, but now…

His face was still round near the cheeks, not completely cleansed of the baby fat of childhood, and his eyes were dark and huge. He was taller than her still, because height had never been one of Mavis' good points, but only by a scant few inches rather than the full head that had separated them when Mavis was thirteen.

He—well, he looked like a child. A baby. He couldn't have been older than sixteen or seventeen, by physical appearance alone.

Mavis looked at him and had the sudden urge to give him cake and pat him on the head and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

The Black Mage tipped his head to the side. Evening sunlight curled around his shoulders, soft and golden. "…Mavis?"

"Mister!" and that word felt just a little odd now, sitting on her tongue, even though she knew that chronologically, he was older than her. "How've you been?" Mavis cranked her smile up a notch, genuinely happy. It had been a long time since they last met. Mavis had fretted and sulked at not being able to say goodbye a decade ago, when the Black Mage had vanished just as mysteriously as he had walked into her life. "It's been ten years!"

His smile, when he replied, was small and just a little hesitant. "I've been wandering, as always." He inclined his head. "You look well." Mavis took a step forward and his entire demeanor shifted from relaxed to ready-to-flee-any-moment, one hand shooting out wildly in the universal gesture of _stop don't move._

"Cursed, remember?" He inched backwards.

Mavis laughed and plopped herself down where she was standing, brushing fallen leaves and dried grasses off the granite rock. There were entire veins of it in the ground, twisting in grey-pink chunks, white quartz and black mica and feldspar. She crossed her legs into a sitting position and smoothed down the length of her skirt, where a procession of flowers marched up the side: white daisies with yellow centers and sequinned leaves.

"We can talk like this then!" she waved towards him, fifty meters away, motioning for him to sit down. "Did you go anywhere nice?"

"Anywhere nice I've been isn't quite so nice anymore," he informed her, self-deprecatingly. "And you?"

It was easy to get back into the swing of things. He was quiet and thoughtful, a good listener and a walking encyclopedia of knowledge. Mavis told him about the Guild: its large walls and the cork boards filled with jobs, the bustle of good cheer and companionship. She illustrated Warrod's greenhouses near the back of the guild with animated gestures, drawing shapes in the air of exotic plant species that thrived there. She talked about Precht's newest magical discoveries and the odd experiments they had been running, about that one time when the hot water malfunctioned and Yuriy shot out of the bathroom in his birthday suit, much to the mortification of half the celebrating Guild and the glee of the other half. She talked and wove and pieced together old stories, new stories, presented with the air of someone used to enthralling a large, boisterous audience. The Black Mage nodded and interjected and poised polite, simple questions. His voice was very soft.

"And Rita's almost nine months in." Mavis twisted her hands into her skirt. A field away, the Black Mage tipped his head. His eyes were wide as he listened, shoulders leaning forward slightly. Mavis couldn't decide if the expression on his face was sad or awed; a blend of both, if she squinted, and felt her heart throb. "We haven't decided on a name yet," she confided him. "Everyone has their lists. Precht wants Pippoko, and the best Warrod can think of is the name of ancient tree species. The closest we have for a permanent one is Makarov, after the King of—Do you know the book?"

"I do," he confirmed. Then added, shyly: "it's a noble name."

That was the catalyst. A bare second after, Mavis felt the unearthly, distinct chill of the Ankherseram Black magic, akin to a single ripple on the surface of a pond. The forest swayed. There was no sound, absolutely no sign of life or motion. It felt like the world had been lulled into a trance.

Then the spell broke, and the forest deadened.

All was quiet.

Mavis plucked one shrivelled brown leaf from the air, feeling the dry, crackling texture of the veins beneath her fingers. The Black mage was already rising to his feet. His mouth was creased into a thin, hard line, his hands held perfectly still at his sides. Mavis watched, and she too moved to stand.

"Will you stay a while?" she asked. The wind snatched the leaf from her grasp and sent it cartwheeling through the air.

He smiled at her, melancholic. "I'm afraid I've already done enough damage for now." He tipped his head to the forest. "And if Yuriy is indeed having a child, I don't believe it would be safe for me to be close."

"You can stay here," Mavis told him. "They won't mind. You were—. These people, and our guild. None of this would have been built if it weren't for you teaching us magic."

He regarded her solemnly, something flickering in the line of his eyes. "Thank you. I… that's very kind of you. However…"

And then Mavis remembered.

She fished the Lacrima communication device from the pocket of her dress. It was a solid weight in her hands, dense and chunky. The center of it had settled into a vortex of glimmering turquoise light, not quite the thunderstorm it rage when activated. Mavis took two steps forward. She drew her arm back. "Wait Mister! Catch!"

The crystal cartwheeled in the air, turning head to tail, head to tail. The Black Mage snatched it in one easy, fluid motion. He blinked, puzzled, then turned to Mavis, waiting for an explanation.

"This is…"

"Fairy Tail original," Mavis beamed proudly. "Precht and I came up with it to help with the war. One main server, ten connecting units. To contact the main server slide your finger down the largest ledge, the other units on the smaller ledges. I've labelled them. This way we can talk even when you're far away!"

Carefully, he inspected it over in his palms. His fingers smoothed over the bump of the ridges, at the top, before looking at Mavis with expression that wavered between hope and hesitance. "It… "He picked his words carefully. Cautiously "It generally isn't very safe to associate with me." He glanced down at the crystal. "If anyone discovers this, I don't believe it would bear well for you and your guild."

Always, always, his eyes were terribly lonely. Maybe he didn't feel it; maybe it had been so long that he couldn't even categorize his emotions properly. He painted himself in such abysmal colours, but in the time Mavis had known him, the Black Mage had been nothing but kindness. Kindness and a weathering, patient teacher.

"I think you're a good person," Mavis told him. With one sweeping arm, she gestured to the dead forest. "The way the Ankherseram curse works, if you didn't care for life, they wouldn't have died. And Fairy Tail doesn't discriminate."

He studied her. His fingers curled around the middle of the Lacrima and near reverently, he tucked it into the folds of his robes. "Thank you."

"I'll call you later okay?"

She stood on her tip-toes and waved until the Black Mage was just a speck of black in the distance, disappearing underneath the canopy of tree branches. The wind pressed indulgent fingers to her cheeks. Mavis skipped back to town, so giddy she could fly, twirling and laughing as the dirt trails of the forests gave way to paved stone to beige-brown roadways.

* * *

Fairy Tail's doors slammed open and she stepped in with a smile and a flourish, backlit by the sounds of ale sloshing, heads bent over job requests.

It felt of home.

* * *

...

* * *

 **Chapter Word Count:** ~4400 words

 **End Notes** : This will probably be one of the longer chapters in this story, as the original premise I had for _Transmissions_ was a series of snippets and scenes spread over short chapters. In addition, this story will be supplemented by one of Livejournal's fifty theme pallets, the prompt for chapter one being _twist._

And I head cannon that Fairy Glitter was also one of the spells Zeref taught Mavis. Originally, the name for the spell was more intimidating and dark-arts worthy, but Zeref modified it so that it would go better with Mavis' cheerful attitude.

(Just imagine Zeref's followers finding out that the darkest, most horrible mage in history coming up with a spell called _Glitter_.)

Tell me what you liked, tell me what you didn't. Thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** I was hoping to have this done and posted a week in but then I got caught up writing a a reverse fairy tale AU and totally forgot this story existed. Anyways, read and enjoy.

* * *

02: BEGINNINGS

* * *

Prompt: Sleep

Mavis found both Yuriy and Precht in the guild's infirmary, once a room with bleached-white walls and matching upholstery that had been transformed over the past two months after Rita's brazen declaration that yes, she was going to give birth in the guild, and no, there was nothing anyone said that could change her mind, and finally Yuriy darling, give me that delightful box of candied oranges, please and thank-you. Yuriy had agreed with reluctance, but he had also managed to worm a compromise into Rita's increasingly stubborn demeanor. In order reduce the stress from Fairy Tail's boisterous, noisy activities, he would be able to cart his wife away and towards the back, to a quieter, less occupied space, like the infirmary. For her part, as long as she was in the guild and her husband continued to bring her the weekly food item of craving, Rita was too preoccupied with managing her lower back pains and reading short fables to the baby to argue.

It was a cheery place now. No longer the mix of harsh white linens and wooden chairs it had sported before. Yuriy had contracted some major renovations (and since the Guild was continuously being pummeled anyways, Mavis had allowed it), painting the walls a soothing green and switching the white bed sheets for soft, plushy comforters with images of tiny bluebirds parading up the side. The floors had remained unchanged, though the mish-mash of furniture had been tossed out and replaced with a large table and comfortable chairs, most of which were storage for the never-ending stream of congratulations gift-cards and bouquets being sent.

Rita was steadily making her way through a large mug of soup when Mavis entered; leaning against a tower of pillows as Yuriy read and Precht solemnly inspected a basket of miniscule, carefully stitched onesies and blankets meant for the baby.

"I'm back!" Mavis called cheerfully, throwing her arms up in a hello. Rita looked up from her soup with a fond smile, setting down her spoon with a clink and beckoning Mavis closer with a slight dip of her head.

"Welcome back, dear."

Beside her, Yuriy squinted up from the book sitting on his knees. This close, Mavis could read the bubble-lettered cover, red font, saying: _Baby Care Book, a Complete guide from birth to Twelve months._

He sketched an idle wave. "Yo Princess. How was your trip?"

Mavis bounced around the sprawling table and its slightly imposing selection of flowers—everything from single tulips to bundles of roses wider than the diameter of her arms to exotic, lamp-shaped buds in graduating shades of violet-blue—plopping herself into the empty chair next to Precht. "Great!" she replied, smile wide. "Guess who I got to meet today!"

She was regarded by both Precth and Yuriy, the latter with his hair in a blond, fluffy disarray, jacket askew, the faint smudge of dark circles under his eyes. He was worn and tired, but it was out of sheer giddiness preventing him from sleep than actual worry. The baby was due soon. If everything went according to schedule, it was supposed to be due in a week, and both parents were on-edge, with Yuriy showing it less in massive consumption of stew and chocolate like his wife, and more in long all-nighters blitzing through every single baby-care manual he could his hands on.

"Did a caravan come to town again?" Precht asked thoughtfully. He folded a tiny yellow hoodie back into the basket. "I've been meaning to see if ordered any more of their Western dagger swords."

"Nope!" Mavis clapped her hands together, letting slip a soft giggle. "Try again. It's better than that!"

At this Yuriy raised one blond eyebrow. The corner of his lips curled upwards. "Better than your books?

"Much better than my books." Her tone was archful. Rita shot the three of them an affectionate look, tapping the base of her spoon against the ceramic.

"Was it a boy?" she implored, tone sly. "The librarian's son has been trying to court you for ages. Although, with these three dorks on the scene he's barely managed to get a single step into your direction." She leveled a stern gaze at dork one and dork two, and crisply declared, "Mavis can fight her own battles. She's a strong young lady." Yuriy pouted in retaliation. Precht's expression seemed stuck somewhere between embarrassed and uncomfortable, shown in the way his shoulders tightened and the slight, almost imperceptible dent of his brow.

Mavis opened her mouth, the reply that " _no, it wasn't a boy_ " caught at the tip of her tongue, a tripwire and a truth and a denial all at once. And then she rethought it. And, well, yes, it was a boy. Sort of. The Black Mage had the appearance of a boy, anyways, soft-cheeked and big-eyed and a terrible, cement weight draped over his shoulders. It wasn't quite the boy Rita was referring to, in the romantic sense, but it was a boy nonetheless.

She eyed Precht and Yuriy, because it had been a while since Mavis had played a joke and it was fun to see the two of them flustered, in a strictly harmless way. "Well, yes," she confirmed, keeping the laughter buried deep in her chest. She fixed her smile into something rosy-cheeked and indulgent, eyes seemingly glazed with a distant memory, her fingertips pressed together. Yuriy's expression swan-dived from curious to mutinous horror, and Precht looked as if he had been forced to swallow both a lemon and his reaction to said lemon. Inwardly, Mavis laughed and laughed and laughed.

"It was. We had a lovely conversation. He was a traveller see, so I had him tell me stories from all over the continent."

She nodded to herself.

Yuriy gave a silent gargle.

"You—Arghh. _Boy_."

"He must have been very polite," Rita allowed. "You should invite him around sometime."

"Oh, he's already left," Mavis informed her gravely. She caught the hidden glint of amusement in Rita's grey eyes and winked, small and hidden. "He couldn't stay long." Then, at the audible sigh of relief from both Yuriy and Precht, brightly continued with, "I gave him my Lacrima phone so we could stay in touch though! His stories and grasp of magic theory are phenomenal."

Yuriy jolted upwards in outraged disbelief. "You gave him your Lacrima phone?"

Mavis glanced towards Precht in her peripheral vision, and found his grip on the basket to be worryingly tight. "… Ah," he ventured. "What was his name? He left earlier today, right? We could catch up to him and invite him back to the guild, if you would like." His smiles had gotten progressively less rigid over the years—induction to actual society Yuriy sniggered—but there was a hint of murder in this one nonetheless.

"I didn't get his name," Mavis told him. "I should ask, next time."

"You didn't get his name? Princess! Stranger danger!"

Rita smacked her husband over the head. Her tone was dryer than Alvarez's deserts. "She's twenty three, not twelve. And by the stories I've heard she was managing herself better than the three of you put together _when_ she was twelve."

"But—" Yuriy squawked.

 _"_ _Sit."_

Yuriy sat. It was a petulant, sulky motion and he looked like a dejected Labrador retriever.

And Mavis burst out laughing.

The giggles uncoiled from her chest, a dam breaking with that last straw, bursting forth in a tidal of fresh water over rock, sweeping up her throat and out her mouth. It was funny. It was hilarious. And none of it was actually false. There _was_ a boy, and he _did_ tell the most wonderful stories, and Mavis _had_ given him her expensive, long-slaved over, Fairy Tail special Lacrima phone so they could keep in touch. It was just that none of this was in the sense those two were thinking of, with the underlying intent having been twisted towards romance with a slight flutter of her eyelashes and Rita's words.

They stared at her. Mavis doubled over to clutch her stomach, laughing so hard. She wiped the tears away from the corners of her eyes to Rita's raised eyebrow, and Yuriy and Precht's dawning suspicions.

"…So there wasn't a boy?" Yuriy edged. He was wielding his baby care book like it was a battering ram in front of him.

Managing to swallow the last of her giggles, Mavis straightened and swung her feet, wrapping her ankles around the wooden legs of the chair. "No," she chirped, pleased. "There was. And I need to raid the storage for a spare Lacrima phone, since I did give mine away." She nudged Precht's shoulder playfully as he and Yuriy exchanged a glance of… _must murder_. Or something along those lines. Mavis caught Rita's exasperated roll of her eyes. "It's not _like that_. Remember the Black Mage? I saw him again in the forest."

Their faces perked. "Him?" Yuriy asked, at the same time as Rita edged sharply into the conversation. "Black mage?"

Yuriy turned towards her. "Did we tell you that story?" Rita's expression was flat, and Yuriy leaned backwards into his chair with a nervous chuckle, index finger acting as a bookmark as he closed the cover of _Baby Care, From Birth to Twelve Months._ "Okay, so we didn't. It was a long time ago though, back before we started the guild and we were still wandering around as treasure hunters. We were looking for the Tenrou Jade, and we got into a fight with Blue skull because of it—that ended up _really_ badly." Yuriy grimaced. His gaze flickered to Precht's covered eye. "Especially since out of the three of us only the Princess knew magic back then. Got our asses kicked and everything. And when we're in the forest recuperating, Mavis just returns one afternoon dragging this ridiculously sorry-looking guy behind her, saying that he was cursed—"

Rita narrowed her eyes. "Cursed?"

"Yeah. Some sort of ancient Black Magic. So pretty much everything that's close to him dies—we weren't allowed within twenty meters of that guy—but, as I was saying. The Princess just drags him into our camp, saying that he's cursed but he'll teach us magic and he's really nice _promise_."

He waggled an eyebrow at Mavis, who stuck out her tongue and shooed him with both hands.

"The guy did. I think we stayed with him for two months, and then one day he just upped and disappeared." Yuriy shrugged, palms spread. "Haven't seen him since."

"…And?"

A befuddled blink. "Huh? That's the end."

Rita sighed. "Next time, let's let Mavis tell the story," she held out her mug, and Yuriy obliged accordingly, scooping out a large ladle full of beef and carrots and celery and tipping it into the wide, garish cat-faced bowl. "It is not one of your better qualities."

"Wow. Offended." He had a hand pressed dramatically over his heart, the other one still holding the ladle.

"You'll live," said Rita, utterly merciless, but there was a hint of a smile curled at her lip as she ate, like soft spring flowers pushing through the frost and mud. For all the bite that Rita's tongue bore, she was fond of Yuriy, terribly so, shown in light touches and little knickknacks at just the right time and a hearty home-made meal at the end of the day. It was Rita's own way of affection.

Mavis trailed a hand over the smooth, ornate decoration of her arm rest, blinking at the rest of the room thoughtfully. Scenes like this, the promise of new life over the corner, Rita and Yuriy trading playful taunts without the underlying current of danger and ambush tuned to their every gesture, this was peace and sunlight and a taste of paradise, and why it had been worth fighting the war in the first place.

"We should have a group chat," she beamed at the rest of the room. "I'll get Warrod to bring down the Main Lacrima globe."

Precht fidgeted with the basket, fingers picking at the woven reeds in a nervous gesture that was very unlike him. "How is he?" he asked, and Mavis was reminded that Precht had admired this man, this boy, who had given all of them the tools to protect themselves in their time of need.

Mavis thought back: pale skin and obsidian eyes and hair a spill of ink at his neck. There was a timelessness to the Black Mage, and not just in his ever-present youth, but the way his movements flowed, precise and hesitant all at once, the level tenor of his voice and the way his eyes softened, in the way of fathers and older brothers and artists, just a crinkle of the edges, that could be found in every generation for eons past.

"He doesn't look any different," she started slowly. "He still talks the way he did before," The way he did when he taught them magic, with the pleasant, rolling syllables of a forgotten accent. "And he looks—" Lonely. Heartbroken. Sad. "Like he needs a friend and a hug."

"That sounds like him alright," Yuriy tssked. "Let's introduce him to Rita. She'll smooth him out."

Introducing him to Rita would probably be detrimental to the Black Mage's already-underheard speaking volume, Mavis thought, because Rita handed a lecture or just a poor, underfed, doe-eyed child would bulldoze through everything set in her path and leave the opposition no time to get a word in edge-wise. She was terrifying that way, a tsunami of change, and well…. Yes. She would, in fact smooth him out, or barring that, just leave him too defeated to do anything but be smoothed out.

"Let's get him on the landline first before you double-team him," Precht said dryly. He rose, dignified and straight, an utter contrast to his very-silent freak out pertaining to Mavis' non-existent beau moments before, and marched out the door. "I'll be back in a bit."

Yuriy filled another mug with soup, this one decorated in lopsided toddler-scribbles. The door snapped shut at Precht's back, and the distant cacophony of pandemonium from the front faded along with it.

"Soup?"

Mavis took the bowl. It smelled warm and delicious, and she dug in with the sudden epiphany that she was ravenously hungry from the long hike to and back from the forest.

Around a mouthful of creamy potatoes, she muffled out a, "Thank you."

Yuriy handed her a handkerchief, pretty and lace-edged, with a picture of a sleeping kitten curled up at its corner.

"Don't mention it Princess."

* * *

...

* * *

Chapter word count:~2400

 **Endnotes** : Accidentally went overboard again. This was supposed to be shorter but then I extrapolated. Oops.

(Well, technically, this story is literally ninety-percent indulgence and the other ten percent is me messing with my characterizations. I'm having great fun with it though, so there's that. But one day I'm probably going to kick out a ten-thousand word chapter and just stare at my computer screen, aghast, because _how did this happen. This was supposed to be a short series._ And by short I mean short chapters because I'm aiming for fifty chapters in total. Whether I will get to that number is up for discussion.)

Tell me what you liked, tell me what you didn't. Your support for chapter one was awesome and wonderful. Reviews are always lovely, and just a "Good Job!" in the comments section below will make my day.

Thanks for reading!


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